About

I am Jinwook Son, a senior at St. Johnsbury Academy Jeju, and I photograph places that are trying to forget something.

I started with the war. On Okinawa and on Gadeokdo near Busan, I photographed caves and gun batteries that the landscape has nearly absorbed. Then I turned to the present: citizens at rallies on both sides of Korean politics, whom I interviewed one by one, and the back streets of Gamcheon, where a famous tourist village is quietly emptying out.

The question underneath all of it is the one I wrote about in my research on Hobbes and Locke: what makes people trust the order they live in, and what happens when they stop. My essays on that question were shortlisted for the John Locke Institute 2026 Global Essay Prize in both the Politics and Law categories.

I also take photographs for other people: a struggling restaurant near my school, my school’s volunteer club, the drama club whose costumes I led for two years.